Blindsided
by Deus Rex Machina
Summary: Danielle had known she was in trouble for a while, and by the time she sets out to get help, she sets in motion a series of events that just may change her life. Prelude to "Amity Legacy" but it can also stand alone as a story, so enjoy yourselves (or not, I'm an amateur writter, I'm not your parents).
1. New Beginnings

Danielle Fenton had been sick for some time, but she had chosen to seek out help too late. Wandering through the streets of Amity Park while rain pounded against her, Dani coughed as she went from building to building, looking for the familiar light that would illuminate her destination.

"C'mon," she said as she climbed the stairs to the latest building, "please, be right."

Unfortunately, she only had the energy to knock on the door three times before collapsing at the door. Chancing a glance up, she watched as the door opened and a teenaged boy into the light, his face hidden by shadows. "Hiya, cousin." Smiling, Dani managed a weak wave before falling asleep at the feet of the local boy from Amity Park.

Pulling the young half ghost into his home and out of the rain, Tucker Foley shook his head and carried her up the stairs to the guest bedroom. "Great," he said, covering her shivering form in a blanket, "the first time a girl comes to see me in the middle of the night and she's delusional."

Dani woke up to a blurry room and a blurry sandwich to go with it. Throwing the covers off of her, she hopped out of bed and inspected the unfamiliar room as best she could. "This doesn't look anything like Danny's house..."

"That's because you're not _in_ Danny's house," Tucker said, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he entered the room, "you're in mine."

Startled, Dani turned to the sound of his voice and let loose a shot of ectoplasmic energy that sent Tucker flying against the wall.

"Nothing says thank you like blasting a guy against a wall, huh?"

"Sorry! You caught me by surprise…hey, you're Danny's friend, right? Thomas?"

"Tucker."

"Tucker, right, sorry. Well, sorry to eat and run but I've got things to do. Oh, and thanks for not letting me die out there and all that jazz." Grabbing the sandwich, she began to walk out of the room, however, instead of the doorway, she was met with the solid interference of a wall. "Ow, what the-?"

"Uh, I know I'm not the expert or anything but I'm pretty sure you have to be intangible for that to work."

"I wasn't trying to walk through the wall, smart guy," she said, rubbing her head from the collision, "I was going out the door."

Looking from the door the wall, Tucker shook his head and walked over to the fallen ghost girl. Helping her up, he lead her out the door and down the stairs. "You don't have to walk me out," she protested, "I'm not a dog you know."

"No, but you're apparently sick and you just ran into a wall, and while that's hilarious to me, it's probably not a good sign for you."

As they began to cross the town to get to Fenton Works, Tucker noticed Dani stumble into several things, a scowl plastered on her face the entire time. Finally, after she almost ran out into traffic, Tucker threw himself on her to keep her from getting into any more trouble.

"What the heck was that about? Are you blind or something?"

"I- it's… compli-."

"Tucker? Dani?"

Looking up, the tangled teenagers finally took notice of the figure towering over them. With her hands on her hips and a smile on her face, it was obvious that Valerie Grey had been amused to see the two of them twisted up on the sidewalk. "Am I interrupting something here?"

"Val! Hi!" Dani said, throwing Tuck off of her with little effort, "Tucker was just taking me to Danny's house and then, uh, tripped on top of me, yeah that's it!"

"Tripped and saved your life." He muttered, adjusting his signature red beret.

"What were you doing with Tuck anyway?"

"…book report."

"But you don't go to school?"

"Independent studies."

Looking around Dani, Valerie found Tucker mocking her sad attempt at a cover up. "Riiight. So why didn't you just call Danny to come get her after your "independent studies"?"

"Because I…" _Didn't think of that "_…shut up, Valerie."

"Umm-hmm…." She said, looking the two of them up and down, "I see what's going on here, you two are dating, aren't you? It's cool, I won't judge, you know."

"Ew, no, we are **_not_** dating!"

"Then what are you two doing."

Tucker was about to explain what had happened, but a quick look at Dani confirmed something he'd been sure of since she mistakenly showed up at his door last night; she was scared. Valerie couldn't tell that her questions were causing Dani to panic, but she wore the same look of fear and desperation that he'd noticed on Danny, invisible to most people but plain as day to someone with years of friendship to go on. So, as he sighed with exasperation, Tucker took his glasses off and put them on Dani. "Okay you caught us, Dani's with me because she needs glasses but she was embarrassed to talk about it with you guys. You know how Fenton's are with their secrets and general weirdness."

Rolling her eyes, Val once again focused her attention on Dani. "That's your big secret, glasses, really?"

"Yeap," Dani said, shaking off the momentary confusion, "you caught me. Anyway, we're going to Danny's to show off my new look, catch you later, bye!"

Rushing off before Valerie could say anything else, Dani grabbed Tuck's arm and hurried in the opposite direction, the glasses actually helping her to see. After a while of walking in silence, a tear formed in her eye and she looked down and whispered, "Back there, how'd you know."

"Because, hello, I'm a techno-geek, if there's two things I know it's computers and how to tell that someone needs glasses."

"It's…it's worse than that actually. I think… I think there's something wrong with me. I think I actually _am_ going blind."

Stopping in his tracks, Tucker sighed once again and turned down a different street, Danielle still holding on tightly to his arm.

"Where are we going" she said, adjusting her newly claimed glasses to make sure she was still seeing correctly, "Fenton Works is the back that way."

"We're going for ice-cream"

"Uh, why?"

"Because," he said, taking out his PDA to send a message to Danny to meet them at the Nasty Burger, "I feel like you're gonna need it."

Walking the rest of the way in silence, Tucker said nothing as the frightened ghost girl continued to hold onto his arm, and Dani said about as much as she continued down the path, still wearing his glasses. A perfect example of the blind leading the blind.


	2. Truce

Walking through the mall with Valerie and Sam in through the Amity Park summer had begun giving her a tan, but Danielle felt nothing as she continued on in her signature red beanie. The familiar fabric provided a welcome weight on her head, completely dry of sweat despite the scorching heat felt by the others. On the other hand, she wasn't sure why she had held onto Tucker's glasses all these months, but now that the time had come to get a new pair, she was certain that she wasn't giving them up.

"Dani," Sam said, adjusting her wide-brimmed hat to cover more of her face, "it's ninety-eight degrees out here, why on earth are you still wearing that thing?"

"I guess the heat doesn't bother me as much as it does you guys," Dani answered, shoving her hands in pockets as they continued to the eye store, "besides, I thought you liked 'simmering.'"

"She's got you there, Count Crisp-ula," Val joked, "besides, she's not the one wearing all black in the middle of summer now is she?"

"What I wear is reflective of how I feel."

"Yeah, and how's that?"

"Overcooked."

Once they reached dropped Dani off at the optometrist's, Val and Sam broke off from each other, each agreeing to meet back at Elmer's Pharmacy for ice cream once they were done. Clutching tight to the old, black-rimmed spectacles, she entered the room and waited patiently to hear what she already knew. _It's funny,_ she thought to herself, _I can remember that conversation like it was yesterday._

Back when she'd first found out she was losing her sight, Dani had gone to the Fenton's in search of a cure, and (once they'd gotten over the surprise of Danny having a genetic clone) she'd gotten one…sort of.

_Your make-up makes a permanent solution tricky, _Mrs. Fenton had told her, her face still ripe with skepticism, _but I believe it's possible for to extend the actual breakdown period with periodic injections. Your eyesight'll still gradually get worse but you should be able to get by on glasses for the next few years. I'm sorry we can't do more._

Now, as she sat in the doctor's office waiting, she realized just how short "a few years" could be.

To her credit, the doctor didn't really question her when Dani requested to keep her old frames in favor of new lenses, and even though the paint had begun to come off, Danielle still wore them faithfully.

"Can I ask what's so special about these that you don't want to give them up?"

"They just… they matter, okay?"

Deciding not to push, the doctor simply went along with her wishes, fitting the stronger lenses into the metal frame that Dani had received when she first got back to Amity Park.

* * *

Waiting patiently in a booth inside the pharmacy, Dani found herself playing with her ice-cream, phasing her spoon in and out without actually breaking the surface of it. After a few minutes, Valerie and Sam finally arrived, and arm full of bags between them.

"So," Sam asked, sliding into the seat beside Dani, "how're the new glasses treating you?"

"Well, I haven't run into any walls today, so there's that," she said, finally taking a spoonful of ice-cream into her mouth, "anyway, I just have to get used to the new lenses, the frames are from my old glasses."

"You mean that beat-up old pair that Tucker gave you?"

"If you choose to call them that, sure."

"So," Valerie began, exchanging a quick, knowing look with Sam, "any particular reason you choose to keep those?"

"They're just sort of…special to me."

"Go on…"

"It's like…y'know… and they're just…like, yeah…so it's…y'know?"

"I totally understood that and am one hundred percent satisfied with that answer."

"Sarcasm isn't cute, Valerie." Dani said, flinging her spoon at the older ghost hunter.

Winking at Dani, Val caught the ice cream in her mouth. "Everything I do is cute," she said, "I'm adorable as hell."

As the three of them shared a laugh, Danielle found herself stirring a spoon around an empty glass, the faintest traces of a smile decorating her face. "Alright, you've put me in a good mood, so I'll let you guys in on a secret; I'm used to be what some people would call a…'nomadic goods-lifter'."

"You mean you used to steal on the go," Sam said, "shocker. But hey, no judgment, you did what you had to survive."

"Right, I've been all over the world, Italy, Jamaica, Canada, Cairo, and all through Japan, but at the end of the day, it's always come down to a 'gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat' situation. Lotta homeless kids out there and not a lot of people willing to lend a helping hand. But, these glasses…they're the first thing anyone's actually given me without an hidden agenda. Tuck didn't give me these because he had to or because he wanted me to use my powers for him in some way, he did it 'cus he saw I was in trouble and decided to help me. Sure they're just a temporary fix, but to someone like me, that… well, that means a lot. I mean, it's no Ferrari or anything, but it's still nice to know that he cared enough to help when I needed someone."

Letting that last sentence hang in the air for Valerie and Sam, Dani once again began playing with her spoon, this time levitating it and making it dance in the air. "Anyway, I've should be getting to work now," she said, letting the spoon drop to the table and pushing herself out of the booth, "Mr. Elmer'll freak if I'm late my first day."

"Wait, you work here?"

"Sort of. Me and Elmer came to a truce a few minutes ago; I work here to pay off all the ice cream I lifted over the months, and he doesn't call the cops on me."

Waving to the two of them as they left, Dani smiled and put on her uniform for work, the bright pink of the apron highlighting the cool blue of her eyes behind the glasses and the faint line of freckles that'd begun to appear across her nose from the summer sun. As she turned to begin her shift, she noticed two figures walking by the Pharmacy, too engrossed in conversation to notice her smiling at them. One who could've been her twin if you'd seen them together… and his friend with the carefree smile, deep red beret, and new glasses.


	3. Proxy

Tucker and Danny had never really had an issue with Kwan, and once they'd gotten past the torment of ninth grade, he'd actually turned into a really close friend. It was the last few weeks before graduation, and even though Tucker had been selected as valedictorian, he still found himself sitting outside with the two of them between classes, basking in the serenity of a nearly empty Casper High campus.

"Man, can you guys believe ninth grade was three years ago," Kwan said, balancing a football on the tip of his fingers, "it seems like just yesterday I was shoving you guys in lockers and dumping trays of food on you."

"And while **_we_** may not have the fondest memories of those times," Danny said, adjusting his game screen so the glare from the sun wasn't as severe, "I still say it worked out pretty well."

"The breakups, the fights, the bullying… breathe it in gentlemen; these were the times of our lives." Breaking away from the dialogue, Tucker found himself focused on a new target, a figure sitting alone on the roof dangling their legs in the open air. However, as soon as he blinked, they were gone.

"-uck! Hey, are you listening.?"

Snapping back into the conversation, he noticed that Danny and Kwan were both staring at him now, each wearing a concerned look. "What was that about, man?"

"What was what?" he asked, honestly confused.

"That thing where you just completely zoned out on us and started muttering something about 'touching the sky.'"

"Oh, that, I was…just practicing my speech for graduation…yeah."

"Dude," Kwan began, throwing the ball down to Danny, "this thing's got you seriously stressed out if you're asking to feel up the sky."

Rolling his eyes, Tucker stood up and caught the ball mid throw, thinking back to the earlier years when he wouldn't have made that catch to save his life. "You know that's not what I meant," he said, tossing the ball back, "but think about, what _really_ happens after we graduate?"

"College?"

"Nope?"

"Families?"

"Uh-uh."

"The harsh realities of a flawed education system set in?" Danny asked.

"Bingo," Tucker said, slinging his backpack across his shoulder, "which means, for now at least, we should be doing anything we want."

Soon after their conversation had begun, the bell rung, and Danny and Kwan cut off their conversation with Tucker and began to take off, racing to their Chemistry class. "Great pep talk, Foley," Kwan said as he shrugged on his jacket, "but save some of it for your speech, man, you're on fire. You gonna manage without out us for a while?"

"Yeah," he said, looking to the spot above him once again, "I'll manage."

Reaching the roof of the school, Tucker sat on the edge and dangled his legs like he used to on the swing sets, kicking at the open air with the abandonment of a child. Without breaking away, he breathed out a sigh of relaxation and asked, "So, how long have you been up here today?"

"Long enough to know that you guys are huge freaking nerds."

"So about four years, huh?"

Appearing beside Tucker on the rooftop, Danielle laughed and playfully punched him in the arm. "Joke all you want, but Kwan was right, you actually had a pretty good speech going until you 'Tuck'd' it up."

"Tuck'd? Is that a thing you made up so now you can rip on me?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, sitting down beside him and letting her legs dangle as well, "I don't need to make up words to make fun of you, your personality does that for me."

"That's such a 'Dani' thing to say."

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said, you just said a stereotypical 'Dani' thing."

"Clone jokes? Really dude?"

"What? When did I make a clone joke?"

"'Such a Danny thing to say?'"

"Your name _is_ Dani!

"Oh, right, cause you _totally_ meant that with an 'i' and not a 'y'-."

"Your name is Danielle Fenton," Tuck interrupted, leaning back onto his elbows, "you've been all around the world and you came back here because you needed help. I'll be honest, I thought you'd have taken off again months ago but for some reason you stayed and I'm kinda glad you did. You're losing your sight but you still manage to kick butt in the field and while you don't go to school here you still insist on showing up to goof around with us in our free time."

"I get bored easily."

"True, but you also; like violent anime, hate strawberry ice-cream and for some reason most of the shows on the BBC. Your taste in music ranges from terrifying at worst to confusing at best. You also hate any movie dealing with aliens and your entire life is basically a string of hard knocks and punk rock. Believe me, if these past few years have taught me anything, it's that when it comes to you, you stop being likes Danny the second you stop punching the Box Ghost in the face."

"I-I…"

"What? You thought you were gonna meet me on a rooftop in the middle of the day and _not _get deep? Uh-uh, you don't get off that easily." Tucker said, turning to her with a smile.

Stunned into silence, Dani simply looked at him and returned the smile. This was her favorite Tucker. Not the loveable goofball who was always good for a laugh or two, not the techno-geek savant with wires on the brain, but the relaxed Tuck, the one who could just relax and enjoy the moment. When Danny and Sam and Val were around, she never really got to see that side of him, and truth be told she hated that, but that was who he was.

Up here, though, with just the two of them on top of the world, he was someone different, he was _her_ Tucker, the same guy that given her his glasses two years ago and the one who could always make her feel better. "You're such a geek, Foley."

"Yeah, well, this geek made valedictorian, so…"

"Pssh, vale-**_dick_**-torian is more like it."

"_There_ she is!"

Tapping him on the arm again as she scooted closer to him on the top of the building, Dani joined him in staring out at the campus beneath them, and for a while neither said anything as their feet swung carefree in the breeze…or as their hands brushed and they watched the day go bye.


	4. Wounded

Any sane person would have stopped experimenting after the second explosion, so it was a good thing Tucker and Valerie had passed sane a few thousand explosions ago.

"Tucker, buddy, I love you," Valerie said as her suit collapsed itself into the hallow spaces inside her bones, the ghostly technology no longer reacting to her sense of danger, "but this is the fifteenth explosion in three days! What the heck are you even working on?"

Since he had graduated two years ago, Tucker had been working at Axion Labs with Valerie, designing technology as part of a college internship. Coughing and waving through the smoking wreckage of his latest invention, he wiped his glasses off and flopped down on one of the bean-bag chairs he kept in the corner of his lab. "Okay, so _maybe_ I had a bet with Sam about renewable energy and maybe, just _maybe,_ I was trying to work out the technology in your suit so that I could reverse engineer the hoverboard tech….maybe."

"So you've almost blown yourself up… because of a bet?"

"Well excuse me for not having an ectobiological techno-symbiotic suit that lives in my body like some weird combination of Venom and Iron Man that I could use as starting point for my AG project."

"Wow, the amount of geek in that sentence actually hurt my brain…oww." Val said as she joined him on the adjacent chair.

Throwing back their heads, the two of them leaned back farther into their chairs, laughing at the familiar situation they'd fallen into once again. Once their laughter had faded, Tucker and Valerie began discussing their recent field developments, pausing every few minutes for him to go into extreme detail about some new form of technology he was studying. Finally, after a few moments of the conversation cooling down, Valerie asked the question that had been weighing on her for a while…

"So…you talked to Dani lately?"

"Uh, yeah, we just hung out yesterday after he came home from school, remember? You, Sam, and Kwan were there too."

"You know that's not who I meant."

Sighing, Tucker leaned out of his chair and grabbed two sodas from the mini fridge beside his work desk. Passing one to Valerie, he flopped back into the familiar squishiness of his chair and popped the top off. "No," he said, staring into the bottle as if looking for answers, "not since October."

"Care to explain why?"

"…"

Shaking her head, Valerie leaned out of her chair and tossed her now empty bottle into the trash. "It's New Year's eve, Tuck," she said as she stood up to leave, "you can either carry this into next year with you, or you can face the music tonight at Danny's party and talk to us about it, your choice. Besides, "she said sparing one final glance at his newest pile of wreckage, "unlike this mess…it wasn't your fault."

_Right_, he thought, turning his attention back to his experiment, _tell that to the ectoplasmic blood on my hands._

* * *

"This is a really bad idea," Dani said as continued through the obstacle course in the Fenton's lab, "and I mean bad even by your standards."

"Oh relax, Dani," Danny said, his voice right in her ear as she ran her daily routine, "it's just a small party. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Ghost pirates abduct everyone again, the town gets sent back in time, ghost dinosaurs could start tearing apart downtown, another evil you from the future could come and spike the punch because time travel is stupid and so is everyone who thinks it's a good idea." She said, recollecting the last few things that had gone wrong when Danny had been involved in parties in the past.

"Okay, but just think of it like this, what are the odds of any of that happening again?"

Stopping in mid-air, Dani rolled her eyes in the general vicinity of Danny's voice, "with your luck…I'd say the odds are pretty good."

"Why must you wound me so?"

"Because it's fun and I get bored easily?"

"…Fair enough," Danny said, turning off the training simulation "c'mon, we've got a party to get ready for."

As they stepped out of the lab, Dani couldn't help but notice how much more natural it was for her to move around now as opposed to last year. Since she had lost the vast majority of her sight ("legally blind" the doctor had told her,with her glasses on she would still be able to see vague outlines and bright colors from a distance, but that was about it until she got closer), she'd been training with Sam, Jazz and Valerie on the weekends they were home from school, and every other week with Danny when he came home. In fact, with all the attention placed on her, Dani found it increasingly difficult to sneak out on here nomadic excursions. _Difficult, _she noted, _but not entirely impossible._

"So what exactly do college kids do at a New Year's Eve party anyway," she asked as Danny handed her a water bottle and a towel.

"They drink, they dance, they group each other inappropriately," Danny said, smirking at his own cleverness, "y'know…the usual friendly things."

"You and I have very different definitions of 'usual,' brother."

"Eh, you say tomato, I say fondling a good friend while the ball drops."

"Sounds like it's not the only thing dropping," Dani replied as she climbed the stairs to go take a shower. Stepping into the spray of warm water, she threw her head back and let the soothing stream wash away her worries. As the sweat and dirt from her daily routine cascaded off of her and down the drain, Danielle Fenton once again found herself running her hand across the small scar that decorated her abdomen, shivering at the memory of how it got there.

"Well," she said aloud to the showerhead, a sad smile decorating her face as a tear rolled down her face, "I guess you can't wash away _all _of my problems, can you?"


	5. Healers

_If this is the universe's idea of a joke_, Dani thought as she stood invisible on the roof of Fenton Works, _then I'm going to punch it in the throat._

The party down stairs had gotten too loud for her liking, so as usual, she found herself floating up to the highest point she could find. Unfortunately for her, she had arrived about the same time as someone else, a shadowy outline whose only distinguishable features were the glare of his glasses in the pale light of his new electronic device. Fighting the urge to faze herself back into the house, Dani instead found herself getting angrier the longer she looked at him.

_You know what? No, _she thought, continuing the conversation, _screw him, "the loner on the rooftop thing" is mine … and he knows that! First he ignores me for two months then he steals my thing?! That's where I draw the line._

"Hey, Foley!"

Turning his head, Tucker searched for the voice but saw nothing but the vents decorating the roof. Eventually deciding that he was just hearing things, he returned his attention to his PDA, his fingers madly typing as if they were possessed.

Frustrated, Dani hovered over to where he was, her anger making her blind to the fact that she was still invisible. "Oh no," she said, snatching the small device from his hands, and dropping it into her bra, "you don't get to keep ignoring me, Foley. Not anymore."

"Gah!" Falling backwards, Tucker rubbed his head as he confusedly looked around, searching for the source of the voice.

"Dani?"

"Oh good, look who remembers me!"

"C'mon Dani, you know that's not fair," he said, the cold December air making it appear as if his words were trying to take physical form, "can we please not do this right now?"

"Not fair?" Dani said, ice now forming at her unseen feet with every step she took, "You really wanna talk about not fair, try being stabbed in the gut by your best friend and then pushed to the side while he runs off to do bigger and better things at his fancy new lab."

"Dani…"

"Try not even getting an apology visit, or being reduced to passing stares at thanksgiving, or not getting a simple 'hey how are you' for Christmas, or…"

"Dani," he said, frozen in the center of a growing ice as she continued around him, "stop…"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Tucker, am I bothering you, is this interaction too much of a hassle for you," she said, finally dropping the protection of invisibility. Reaching out, she grabbed his hand and placed it on the scar on her stomach, holding it in place through the thin fabric of her shirt, "or maybe, you just want to finish the job you started? You want me to stop, tell me why I should, or better yet…" she said, holding his gaze and pouting her lips out, "make me."

Brushing his thumb against the raised line of skin on her stomach, Tucker stood silent on the rooftop, his face stoic as he took in all the details of this moment. "Is that what you think happened," he said, fighting back anger of his own as he looked into her accusing eyes, "you think I'm happy _this_ is here?"

"Dani, for the last sixty-two days, this has been on my mind, gnawing at me, making me more and more afraid of getting closer to you" he said as he took a step towards her, "and the reason that this tiny little line of skin has been driving me insane, is because I'm the one who put it there. Say all you want, how I was possessed or overtaken or however you want to put it, but at the end of the day this mark right here is still a Foley original and I've been so afraid of you hating me for that."

"But you could've at least _tried _talking to me about it," Dani said, her eyes softening as they darted away from him, "and if me getting hurt's such a big deal then how about you tell me why next time! Don't just cut me off like a little blood is gonna be the end of me; text me, call me, anything! I was worried about you, jerk!"

"You think I didn't try? Dani, there are four hundred messages to you alone that I started and never got to send. Every time I built something cool or saw something cute or just wanted to apologize to you again, I'd get so close to sending it but be too afraid to let it go through. I mean, do you know how hard it is thinking someone you love hates you?"

"Quite frankly, yes I freakin do!"

Silence danced across the rooftop as the faint hum of music pulsed beneath the two of them, suddenly all too aware of how close they still were to each other.

"You- you what?"

"I- uh."

"You love me," Dani whispered, her blue eyes wide behind the lenses of her glasses as she stared up at him, "like actually in-love-with-me love me."

"No," Tucker said, avoiding _her_ gaze now, "I said 'I love you', y'know, like… like friend love, like, y'know… Anyway can we go back to the really serious discussion about me accidently piercing you with a cursed sword on Halloween?"

"Oh my god," Dani gasped, her fury at him now melted into a sense of contained felicity, "you were _waiting_ for me up here weren't you?"

"Okay, no, that was just poor universal timing." Tucker explained, sensing that the tension between the two of them was easing back into its natural state.

"Really" she asked, skeptically, "so then what were you doing on a rooftop at almost midnight in the dead of winter if you didn't wanna get all kissy-kissy with me?"

"_Kissy-kissy_? Three minutes ago you though I wanted to stab you again, which, hurtful by the way!"

"Yeah well three minutes ago you were stealing my thing and hadn't just been an adorable dork about stabbing me."

"I-"pausing, Tucker looked down at her and smirked, "so… adorable, huh?"

Going scarlet, Dani turned away from him and took a few steps forward. "I didn- I mean in the right light it's like, you're kind of… whatever Foley, I'm still mad at you."

"You probably are, but if you take my phone out of your bra long enough for me to unlock it so you can read some of those apology messages," he said as he walked up beside her, "maybe you'd be a little less mad?"

"We'll see… and how do you know it's in there," she asked, playfully defiant, "maybe I put it in my jacket pocket?"

"Dani, please, you put _everything_ in there. One time I saw you pull out half a bag of skittles from there."

"We'll just save that for later then, right now you can just stick to explaining why exactly you were up here tonight."

"Oh, right… science, duh." Crouching down, Tucker pressed a button on the side of his shoes, causing him to begin hovering above the ground. "After a few-minor- explosions, I finally figured out the faulty pieces in my hover-tech design earlier and I figured why not test it out now and rub it in Danny's face while I'm at it." Pausing to check his surroundings and to make sure there were no major mistakes, Tucker put one hand around Dani and lifted her up with him, holding her in a fireman's carry. "And okay yeah, maybe I did want to get bit 'kissy-kissy' with a certain ghost girl I'd been blowing off for too long."

"I freaking knew it," she said bopping him on the nose as he walked to the edge of the roof and took three steps into the open air, "so what's your next move?"

"It's still New Year's Eve for another three minutes," he said, as they began descending, "and there's still a party going on that we should be attending."

"Okay but, uh, you do remember that I _can_ fly… right?"

"Yeah, but I also remember that you never pass up the chance to be carried."

"This is true."

Tentatively kissing her nose, Tucker smiled as he looked at the girl in her arms, "Going down?"

Laughing, she wrapped her arms around his neck, enjoying the warmth of him being so close to her after weeks without contact between the two of them. "Talk to me after a few dates."

"Cute." Touching down outside of Fenton Works a few seconds, Tucker knocked on the door, carefully avoiding the scar that decorated the side of Dani's stomach while still holding her tightly to him. "Does tonight count?"

Walking into the booming noise of Danny Fenton's party, Dani lead Tucker through the living room, ignoring the looks and whispers of the people around them (and the money changing hands from Sam to Valerie and Danny). After they found an empty seat on a chair, they watched the ball drop on television with their fingers intertwined and Valerie shouting "I freaking told you so," in the background, sealing the deal with an awkward New Year's kiss attempt that ended with them accidentally hitting their foreheads together and laughing.

"You know what, Tuck," she said, planting a kiss on his check and finally handing him his phone amidst the roar of a new year's celebration, "if shouting at each other on a cold dark rooftop about stab wounds counts as a date in your book then congrats, you've just had the weirdest date ever."


End file.
